The Obama administration said Friday that the United States will boycott an upcoming U.N. conference on racism unless its final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion.

The anti-Israel stuff is boilerplate bullcrap for anything the UN does. But it’s the “defamation of religion” thing that’s really special: passed in December of 2008, the rather remarkable Durban II Draft Declaration seeks to impose Islamic notions of anti-blasphemy laws on all nations of the world. If the US were to ratify it, it would carry the force of law such “That permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression are … incorporated into national legislation.” And what are these limits on freedom of expression? Why… “defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols,” “publication of offensive caricatures,” “incitement to racially motivated religious hatred,” and “stereotypical association of Islam (and Muslims) with violence and terrorism.”

In other words… don’t say anything bad about Islam.

“As the existing national laws and courts have failed to address the issue, internationally binding normative standards need to be devised that can provide adequate guarantees against defamation of religions and religious intolerance.”

Hey, guess what: religious defamation is a right. A God Given Right, if you so choose. Anyone who would dare to impose a restriction on free people from saying something like “your religion is the worst form of backwards gutter thinking, founded by a murderous lunatic and controlled today by murderous lunatics, and your basic theology is misogynistic simpleton garbage, appealing only to the ignorant, the intellectually defective and the psychotic” or, more simply, “There is no god called Allah, and Muhammad is not his prophet” needs to be taken out back and beaten senseless, then put in stocks in the center of town for children to throw rotten vegetables at.

Hey, Muslims around the world: Most of the world does not believe in your little religion. Grow the hell up and accept that fact. Realize that attempts to force your religion on others will, sooner or later, result in the Islamic world facing a retribution the likes of which you have never imagined. Just imagine Vlad the Impaler armed with nuclear weapons. Y’all are so found of nukes and other weapons of mass destruction? Don’t mess with Western Civ. We invented the friggen’ things.

An illustration from 1985 or before showing the weapons loads that the B-1B could carry. Note the row of weapons on middle-left: 38 AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles. Presumably this was meant to show that the B-1B could serve as a flying “picket ship,” spending extended durations orbiting some area – borders, or perhaps maritime patrol – and ready to unleash long-range whoopass on Soviet bomber or fighter fleets. A less likely possibility is that the B-1B could serve as an “escort fighter” for other B-1’s as they penetrate deep into Soviet territory. This idea was tried in WWII with the YB-40 and the XB-41 “escort bombers,” with bombs removed and additional machine gun emplacement added; results were dismal. Thus I doubt the “B-1 Escort Bomber” concept. But if anybody knows for sure, feel free to speak up.

Three supermarkets have been destroyed and a fourth damaged in central Sweden in what police say might have been a series of anti-American arson attacks.

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Global Intifada claimed responsibility for two fires in Sodertalje last year.

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Swedish Radio reports that Global Intifada had recently distributed leaflets in Sodertalje encouraging the public to firebomb shops selling American products.

“Global Intifada?”

You might not normally think of Scandinavia as a hotbed of Islamofascism. You might normally think of Scandinavia as a hotbed of hot Scandinavian chicks. Well, one of your thoughts would normally be right, and the other would normally be wrong. Scandinavia has imported a great many “refugees,” and the results have been apparently dramatic and pretty much inevitable:

Malmø, Sweden. The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations’s third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengård, Malmø, for twenty years, and still don’t know how to read or write Swedish.

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Rapes in Sweden as a whole have increased by 17% just since the beginning of 2003, and have had a dramatic increase during the past decade. Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace. Two weeks ago, 5 Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.

The great irony here is that the group “Global Intifada” is, despite its name, not a Muslim terror organization… but a Swedish left-wing Socialist organization. Once again, the far left doing the dirty work of religious “conservatives;” exactly the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen. But extremists seem to not only accept cognitive dissonance, they friggen’ revel in it.

The further irony here is that socialists like “Global Intifada” are targeting “Americans” (althought they’re actually harming Swedes) even though one of their own has just taken power int he US. Where’s the love for the Obamessiah, people? I thought electing him was going to make the world love the US again!

Does the charging of Malakoff with possession of illegal pornography mean that his politics are by definition flawed/wrong/immoral? Hell no. What it means is that he is (allegedly) flawed/wrong/immoral. What it shows is that dumbassery of this kind knowns no political affiliation.

Parts of the United States military have wanted very fast troop transport for a very, very long time. And it doesn’t get any faster than sticking soldiers or Marines into a rocket-powered vehicle and launching them ballistically from here to there. Somewhere around here I have a sketch drawn by von Braun during the war showing how many people he could pack into the nose of a V-2 (answer: 3). And in the late 1950’s, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency gave serious consideration to lobbing soldiers via Redstone and even Saturn rockets:

Every few years the idea crops up again, only to fade away as the technology and expense just don’t match the dream. But every time the idea comes up, the technology has advanced. And it has come up again, and just maybe, this time there’s a shot. From Flightglobal.com:

Pentagon seeks military role for space tourism technology

The National Security Space Office (NSSO) has invited companies such as Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Xcor to a conference from 24-26 February in San Antonio, Texas to discuss how suborbital technology could be applied to military needs.

The conference follows the release of an official request for information for a new programme called the “rapid delivery of military capabilities via space”. The document seeks information from commercial firms about new technologies that could loft a 200kg (440lb) payload above 92km (57 miles) altitude to ranges up to 9,250km (5,000nm).

Compared to earlier studies, 440 lbs sent 5,000 miles is pretty small. However, it’s a good starting point for something like this:

The XCOR “Lynx,” a two-man suborbital “tourism” craft. While the Lynx in and of itself is much too small for this new transport role, where the Lynx would be useful is as a demonstrator: XCOR is not working on squeezing out every last smidgen of performance out of its rocket engines, but instead on making them reliable and cheap. And that is what would make rocket transport more likely to occur. Not bleeding edge fancy blingtech. Using rockets to throw troops hither and yon would certainly require that advanced be made in rocket transport… but advances that include such novel concepts as utility, maintainability and ruggedness. Fragileexpensiveunreliableeggshells need not apply. And the end result, if made to work, would open the door for cheap commercial rocket transport, cheap suborbital tourism, and relatively cheap orbital flight.

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.

The obama administration looks like it’s trying to set off a civil war or a mass exodus of seceding states. With the biggest power-grab and pick-pocketing the American taxpayers have ever seen now law, there is an increasing grumble to bail out of the US. At the small end there’s the “Tea Party” movement; up to the “Sovereignty Movement,” and right up to outright secession (note that in that last link, the writer assumes that secession is only discussed by “extremists;” when what seems more likely is that the writer merely assumes that anyone who dares to discuss the topic is by definition an extremist).

States seceding from the US would, at least in the short term, be an unmitigated disaster. While the last time this happened bloodshed was avoided until the South decided to militarily attack the US Federal Government, if states split from the US today I am not entirely convinced that the US government would be as hesitant to spill blood. And if one state secedes from the Union successfully, the rest of the US will likely fall apart to some degree sooner or later. A Balkanized US is right out of the worst genres of apocolyptic fiction.

On a smaller scale, secession could be a fantastically useful thing. For example: Illinois would benefit no end if it would secede from Chicago. Let Cook County, with it’s ridiculous laws and fantastically corrupt politicians, go their own way. In California there was the “Bay Area Nation” idea, where San Francisco and surroundings would split off to form their own hippie utopia. Such a small nation would obviously be a great advantage… the die-hard socialists and communists would have a place to flock to (thus freeing up space “back home” for people who aren’t friggen’ morons), and the US would have yet another blatant example of why collectivism is a dumbass economic system when the Bay Area Nation fails even more utterly than Cuba has. Plus,the US would have a place to empty its jails into.

But what’s going on today is much more widespread. I heard similar rumblings during the Clinton administration… but those rumblings took years to get up to speed, and I don’t recall them being as loud at their worst *then* as they are *now,* only a month into the obama regime’s reign. As “Atlas Shrugged” daily transitions from a bizarre fantasy novel into a disturbingly accurate look at the government, the chances of obama pushing things too damned far and spurring a Strike just look more and more likely. Setting up a blatant socialist state and grabbing the guns is just asking for trouble.

In an effort to bump up viewership of my little blog, I’ve added a plugin that allows me to add “Digg” submission buttons to some of the posts… so if you are registered at Digg and like a posting of mine, feel free to take a stab at it. I’ve gone back and added ’em to some of the posts over the past three pages of blog postings.

Specifically, they are going to go to a no-kill animal shelter before the end of the week. They need to find a good home, where they can live indoors in some sort of safety and comfort. However, if you happen to live somewhere nearby and want a couple of cats, if you can collect ’em, you can have ’em. Just treat them well.

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]